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coronavirus intensive-care unit at risk of burning because its structure is similar to that which exacerbated the 2017 Grenfell Tower blaze was closed this week after an investigation by Insider. - The King's College Hospital ICU in London is one of six hospitals considered at risk of burning because of the aluminum-composite cladding used in their exteriors.
- Fire risk in ICUs is real because of the oxygen canisters used in coronavirus treatment.
- The UK government declined to tell Insider which other hospitals were at risk. "No one's going to tell you what the buildings are — we've very clear that it's not in the public interest due to safety concerns," a representative said.
- The UK National Health Service has struggled to fix its buildings because it was excluded from a £1 billion fund that targeted mainly residential housing.
A hospital in London closed an emergency intensive-care unit for coronavirus patients this week because the building's structure poses a fire risk similar to that which exacerbated the Grenfell Tower inferno in 2017.
Seventy-two people died in that fire, which spread quickly because of highly combustible aluminum-composite "cladding" on the outside of the building.
The closing of the King's College Hospital unit came one week after Insider made inquiries to a government auditor and two separate government departments about the National Health Service hospital's decision to use the new building as an intensive-care unit.
At least five other hospital buildings in the UK have the same dangerous paneling that contributed to the Grenfell fire, Insider's investigation found.
The risk of fire in ICU units is real: In May, five patients died and 150 were evacuated from an ICU in Moscow after an oxygen canister caught fire, according to reports.
Coronavirus patients were moved into the building when the hospital ran out of space
King's College, in the Camberwell area of London, opened a previously unused building in April within weeks of England's lockdown to treat coronavirus patients, a spokeswoman for the hospital told Insider. She said the building was evacuated this week amid concerns it might have had the same paneling as Grenfell Tower. The hospital now plans to remove the paneling, and patients have been moved elsewhere in the hospital, she said.
The building is now covered in green netting because of ongoing work. A police car was parked outside the hospital on Thursday afternoon.
The hospital moved coronavirus patients to the building when it ran out of space in the main hospital, a source told Insider in April.
The hospital created a separate but adjacent 60-bed critical-care center near the Ruskin Wing, on top of an existing surgical block.
Medical student dorm evacuated
In 2017, Arup Group, an engineering company the NHS hired to work on cladding and facade designs, identified a non-patient area at King's College Hospital as potentially having the same aluminum-composite cladding used in Grenfell Tower.
The hospital also evacuated one of its student accommodations in January this year over fears it had dangerous cladding, according to separate reports.
Hospital staff members were not formally made aware of dangerous cladding in the hospital buildings, sources said.
An Insider investigation found that Arup Group had informed government and hospital chiefs that part of King's College had dangerous cladding in 2017.
Last week, Insider asked the government to identify all six hospitals that had yet to complete remediation work for Grenfell-style fire risks. Those hospitals were also made aware in 2017 that their buildings posed a severe fire risk, according to a report by the UK's National Audit Office published in June.
'We're not going to identify the hospitals concerned'
A spokesman for the Ministry of Housing, Communities & Local Government said in a statement: "We're not going to identify the hospitals concerned."
"No one's going to tell you what the buildings are — we've very clear that it's not in the public interest due to safety concerns," Karl Smith, a ministry representative, told Insider.
The government said it would not disclose the information to avoid the risk of attracting arson or terrorist attacks.
Smith said the decision not to disclose this information was made by ministers several years ago. He said his agency had been in discussion with the Department of Health & Social Care following Insider's inquiries and had produced a "cross-Whitehall statement."
The Department of Health & Social Care, in an emailed statement, denied it had acted after Insider raised the issue: "The issue at Kings is not related to Aluminium Composite Material cladding and the action was not taken as a result of your earlier enquiry." Another spokeswoman said the closing was due to concerns over the cladding on the building but did not believe it was ACM cladding.
The National Audit Office previously identified seven hospitals as having unsafe aluminum-composite cladding. Two of those had no remediation plan in place as of April, the month after the pandemic lockdown, an NAO report said. The NAO said the government had asked it not to disclose the hospital names to prevent the risk of arson.
Speaking privately, a government source told Insider the NAO was correct. Multiple hospitals have removed cladding from their buildings, but six have still not done so. The NHS is conducting an ongoing review.
The NHS was excluded from a fund designed to fix dangerous buildings
Part of the reason for the delay in removing the cladding is that NHS hospital trusts have to fund the removal from their existing budgets, after they were excluded from a pot of money announced by the government for remediation work.
The NAO said a £1 billion building safety fund for the removal of paneling considered a fire risk would be available only for residential high-rise buildings in the private leasehold and social-housing sectors.
"Hospitals would therefore not be eligible for this funding (nor for the £200m fund for the replacement of ACM cladding in the private leasehold sector, nor the £400m funding for ACM cladding in the social housing sector)," the NAO said.
King's College hospital was on a list of 38 hospital buildings originally identified by the NHS as potentially having unsafe aluminum-composite cladding.
Neither the Arup Group nor the National Fire Chiefs Council responded to a request for comment by the time of publication.
If you have more information about fire risks at NHS hospitals, please get in touch with Jessica Davies at jdaviesjournalism@outlook.com, or 07747033141. Confidentiality offered.